mentor Resources

Mass Mentoring Partnership Tools

Race, Equity & Social Justice

supporting LGBTQIA+ mentees

FIRST-GENERATION EXPERIENCE

"Why Not Us?" -  Being the first in your family to attend college is daunting, but rewarding.

Follow the journeys of four young people—all first in their families to go to college—as they road-trip across the country to interview inspiring individuals who were also first in their families to pursue higher education.

After gaining wisdom and guidance from trail-blazing leaders—including Anna Maria Chávez, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA, Grammy Award-winner John Legend, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz—the Roadtrippers are emboldened to embrace the opportunities ahead and ask “why shouldn’t I succeed?”

TED talks

The danger of the single story – This is a terrific TED talk that consultants had us watch before we underwent our Cultural responsiveness training at MMP. It nicely encapsulates the themes around cultural responsiveness and the danger of stereotypes and assumptions.  They had us view this individually and then debrief this with a colleague. You could very much come up with questions or prompts or find ways to connect this to mentoring and working with your young people.

We need to talk about Injustice - This is an incredibly powerful TED talk in which the speakers eloquently articulates the inequities in our criminal justice system. We’ve used this in a couple of our trainings now to help participants be more critically conscious of institutional oppression. It’s very powerful and there are definitely some good discussion questions that one could use. If there were opportunities to connect the ideas hear to what can happen more locally, that might be one excellent step.

Socialization of Men - At TEDWomen, Tony Porter makes a call to men everywhere: Don't "act like a man." Telling powerful stories from his own life, he shows how this mentality, drummed into so many men and boys, can lead men to disrespect, mistreat and abuse women and each other. His solution: Break free of the "man box."

deij Tools

Implicit Association Test  - is a very foundational tool for uncovering implicit bias. It can show how we often have automatic preferences for in-group members than out-group. There are dozens of tests that participants can take at home with a computer and a smartphone. We’ve had participants take these before trainings and then discuss them. I’ve attached a handout that we have created for using this with training participants. This can be modified.

Ladder of Inference - One tool we’ve used in some of our Cultural Responsiveness trainings is the ladder of inference. It’s a framework for thinking about how we essentially think and make conclusions. Especially when thinking about implicit bias and judgments, this tool can help individuals be more cognizant of how one makes meaning and assumptions in the world. For cross-cultural work, it can allow us to realize how our implicit judgments are formed and made of individuals of different backgrounds, and how we can be mindful when this is happening. This tool can be very helpful for working across differences.  

ARTICLES

The Four I’s of oppression – This is a framework we explore in most of our CR trainings that articulates the different forms of oppression from internal, interpersonal, institutional and ideological. This can be a pretty useful article when thinking about oppression.

The Making of Ferguson - This report really fleshes out how public policy led to very intentional segregation in Ferguson, Missouri. It tells a powerful story of institutional racism that very often people are unaware of.